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From: rainwatr@ucunix.SAN.UC.EDU (Don Rainwater)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm
Subject: Re: MAJOR problems with TheNews -- advice/information sought
Keywords: TheNews 1.0, Mac NNTP program, Usenet News
Message-ID: <535@ucunix.SAN.UC.EDU>
Date: 7 Dec 90 18:44:54 GMT
References: <1990Dec7.091005.28377@sarah.albany.edu>
Reply-To: Don.Rainwater@UC.Edu
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.comm
Organization: University of Cincinnati
Lines: 77

In article <1990Dec7.091005.28377@sarah.albany.edu> derek@leah.albany.edu (Cinderella Man) writes:
	[Paraphrased - indicated by [ ] throughout. ]
> [ Mac NNTP news reader, TheNews 1.0.  Looks impressive.  Won't work. ]
> [ Read the manual.  No luck.]

	Me too.

>Hardware specifics:
> [ Mac IIci, 4Mb, 80Mb disk, 13" RGB, CD-ROM, Novell EtherPort II. ]
>Software specifics:
> [ System 6.0.5, MF, AppleShare, EtherTalk 2.01 Phase 2, MacTCP. ]
> [ BYU/NCSA Telnet 2.3.1, Brown U. TN3270, Eudora. ]

	Mac II, 8Mb, 40 Mb disk, 13" RGB, Novell EtherPort II.
	System 6.0.5, MF, Appleshare, EtherTalk 2.01 Phase 2, MacTCP,
	DEC LANworks software (DECnet, LAT, Comm Toolbox, etc.)

	SU/MacIP, BYU/NCSA Telnet 2.3.1, MacX, MacTerminal, HyperFTP,
	HyperCard NewsReader Stack all work fine for me.

>Now to the situation:
>	The program boots fine.  I set the IP address for my local NNTP
>server, and select "New" from the File menu.

	I found a problem with the IP address field.  It doesn't seem to
be big enough.  It should be able to handle an address like
###.###.###.###, but it won't.  It seems to be two [bytes,chars,digits]
short.  Fortunately, I have a news machine here that will fit into the
field, but the machine that I want to use (since I am the sys/news admin)
has an IP address that won't fit.

> [ Dialog box appears, listing available newsgroups from server. ]
> [ Window appears with names of groups. ]
> [ "Add group" to subscribe.  Status always "0 unread  1 available". ]
> [ "Read" brings blank window.  No group ever has any messages. ]
> [ rrn from another machine to this news server works fine. ]

	Same thing happens to me.  As listed above, I have used the
HyperCard Newsreader Stack to access the news from the same machines
here, and have had no trouble (it's just slow, being HyperCard :).

> [ Most aggravating part --> after getting the newsgroup list, trying to ]
> [ save the list (with "Save" or "Save as...") freezes the Mac. ]
> [ Happens with no changes, adding only one group, or adding several. ]

	I get 'The application has unexpectedly quite (-1)'.  I'm then
back at the desktop.  If I switch to another application, everything's
okay, but if I try to launch (foolishly) TheNews again, my system locks
up too.

>	I have not been able to get past these problems.  I've repeated them
>at least a dozen times.  I've changed my system configuration, removing all
>INITs/cDevs (except for the basic Apple set, Network, and MacTCP); I've
>booted under MultiFinder, Finder, changed the memory allocation of the
>application, turned off the RAM cache, basically everything I can think of,
>but the problems remain the same.  I'm pretty convinced it's a conflict
>with the IIci itself, but hopefully not (it wasn't one of the machines
>mentioned as a test Mac).  

	Well, I can confirm that it's not a IIci problem, since my
system is a Mac II.  I tried most of the same things to get it to work,
without luck.

>	I hope the information I've provided will be enough to guess at the
>source of the problem, even sight unseen; any help is greatly appreciated.

	Hopefully, this information will shed even more light on the
problem so that it can be fixed.  TheNews looks like a slick program,
and it's really fast.

	BTW, would it be that much more trouble to resolve a host name
rather than requiring the IP number?

--
Don Rainwater, Systems Manager/Postmaster, Univ. of Cincinnati Computer Center
Don.Rainwater@UC.Edu				rainwatr@ucunix.san.uc.edu
rainwatr@ucbeh.bitnet				...!uccba!ucunix!rainwatr